Customer Reviews

Digging Up the Past: Genesis, Chapters 3-11 (Discover 4 Yourself® Inductive Bible Studies for Kids)

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I appreciated the last reviewer's concern over a young earth world view. That is exactly one of the reasons I am attracted to this book. As answersingenesis.org can also attest to, science clearly is consistent with this view and without this view we undermine the authority of God's word. This is an excellent tool!

LOVE these Bible study series. We have purchased several of them for my child's independent study time. The authors do a good job of making the study fun and teaching the kids to dig into God's word. Sometimes the words used are a bit mature beyond the average student's knowledge but this can be a great time to ask a parent or teacher for help. I'm VERY happy with these studies and have enjoyed watching my child learn to study God's word. I highly recommend them!

We love precepts studies. Kay Arthur does a great job helping kids investigate the Word of God and learning more about their loving Father. The activities are fun and you feel like a real detective.

"Digging Up The Past" is a Bible study of Genesis chapter 3 through 11 for tweens (ages 9 to 12). It has an archeology theme with an story involving Max and Molly running throughout. The child reads a chapter in Genesis (which is provided in the back of the book with plenty of space for marking important things) and then goes through a series of questions and puzzles that lead them to think over the important things that happen in that chapter. The authors also tied in related New Testament verses.

I thought the questions brought out good points, and I liked that the focus remained on discovering what the Bible says. The word scrambles, word finds, mazes, crosswords (with the word found by looking up a verse), and other puzzles were fun (even for me, an adult!). I think the skill level needed to solve the puzzles was just right for the age range, but I no longer have anyone that age to test this book on. The answers to the puzzles were in the back of the book.

The authors' treat Genesis 3-11 as an accurate record of historical events that really happened. Overall, I'd recommend this children's Bible study. I think it's one that children will actually enjoy doing, and I appreciate that they didn't lessen how much was learned in the process of making it fun.

Ms. Arthur and Ms. Ardnt are to be highly commended for their efforts to teach children how to study the Bible inductively. They don't insult the child's intelligence with an abundance of shallow statements about God and "just be nice" theology. Rather, they attempt to take the child by the hand and actually teach him or her how to interpret the Bible using some foundational tools that will allow the child to discover the meaning of the text on his or her own. They even do a careful job tacking the thorny theological issue of the Fall of Adam and Eve.

Unfortunately, this book also contains typical young-earth "science" -- teaching children that there were dinosaurs on Noah's ark, that the entire fossil record was laid down in a global flood a few thousand years ago, and other equally bogus "scientific" (and biblical) claims. It's sad that this approach is so commonly used in children's books written by conservative Christians. Although it's taught under the banner of "critical thinking" what it really does is set the child up for a crisis of faith later on when he or she learns about the MOUNTAIN of physical and biblical evidence standing against this paradigm.

And the REALLY sad part is that it's completely unnecessary to impose such a paradigm on the biblical text itself. If the authors would consistenly apply the tools they are teaching the children, they would realize that the text does not demand a view that the earth was created in six 24-hour days a few thousand years ago. A literal, grammatical and historical hermeneutic allows for an day-age approach or a framework apporach -- both of which allow both of God's revelations to man (the words of the Bible AND the record of nature) to inform one another on the issue of how and when God created.

The theme of this book is discovery -- teaching children how to discover the Word of God for themselves. Unfortunately, the authors do not thoroughly delve into either the biblical text or the record of nature. Instead they treath both revelations in a shallow manner and end up misleading children away from the methods of true discovery.